Free The Chaplain’s Legacy by Brad Torgersen

weighed too much and her wings were too small for sustained flight, but while she flew—her body extended and piercing the air like a javelin, her beak aimed directly forward and her legs and forelimbs folded up tightly against her body—she was magnificent.
    The Professor’s disc fell straight down the wall of the Canyon.
    The speaker grill on the disc’s front was blaring amplified mantis speech. Which the Queen Mother appeared to happily ignore.
    “She’s beautiful,” the captain whispered.
    “I didn’t know they could fly,” I said, still astonished.
    After a couple of seconds, Adanaho’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a wide, genuine smile. “I don’t think the Queen Mother knew either. Until now.”
    We watched as the Queen Mother continued her slow descent, until at last she lightly touched down on a wide sand bar in the middle of the river. Walking to the edge, she lowered he mouth to the water and began taking in copious amounts of fluid.
    The Professor zoomed up to her, his disc’s motors making funny shapes in the surface of the water as he moved across it. The Queen Mother appeared to ignore him for a few more moments as he hovered directly next to her, animatedly talking with his mandibles.
    Finally she looked up at him.
    She said something.
    The Professor backed away from her and went across the water to the canyon wall directly beneath us.
    I gauged the distance to be two hundred meters down.
    Now he really did look like a bug. Smaller than my thumb.
    “We are committed,” he said, his speaker grill turned up to maximum. His vocoder-voice echoed long and far, up and down the canyon.
    “We can’t climb down at this point,” the captain yelled, then began coughing.
    “Let us travel downriver until there is a place where you can join us,” replied the Professor.
    “Agreed,” I called at the top of my lungs. Then I stood up and retrieved my load from where I’d dumped it on the ground. The captain stood up too. She trudged over to me.
    “Sorry ma’am,” I said. “Looks like you’re hoofing it again.”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “I need to work the knots out of my muscles. Here, give me my pack, I will carry it.”
    I eyed here, but decided to follow orders.
    She took the pack without complaint, and off we went. Staying just close enough to the canyon edge that we could see down to the Professor and the Queen mother, but not so close as to give me and the captain vertigo. After-images of the Queen Mother’s sudden, elegant, altogether astounding flight ran across my vision as we walked. Until that time I’d still considered the mantes to be an ugly race. They were also vicious and brutal in combat. But for a minute or two, I’d seen a mantis take flight—soaring and spectacular.
    “What a story you’ll have for the intel people,” I said as we walked.
    “What a story,” the captain agreed. “Nobody’s going to believe this. I wish I’d had a camera or a recorder on me to get evidence. She looked as natural as can be. Free as a bird, one might say.”
    “Amazing that her instincts were that good,” I said. “She jumped off that cliff purely on faith, apparently.”
    “Apparently,” said the Captain.
    I sensed something else from her, though she didn’t speak for several more minutes.
    “Chief,” she said.
    “Yes ma’am?”
    “Is it true what you said?”
    “About what?”
    “About you not having had a woman in your arms for a dozen years?”
    “You were eavesdropping again,” I chided her.
    “I have good ears,” she said. “So, it’s true?”
    “Uhh, yes ma’am.”
    “How come?”
    “Beg your pardon?”
    “How come you didn’t have a lady friend on Purgatory? Someone to share your sorrows with?”
    “That’s a good question. I’m not really sure. Granted, I am not the world’s most handsome fellow, but that didn’t stop a lot of the other prisoners from getting the attention of the opposite sex. I think once I built the chapel and took